The Early Years

MY JOURNALING BEGAN WITH AN EXAMINATION OF MY CHILDHOOD.

I was trying to reconnect with my past to remember all the joy and fun I had growing up. As I remembered some of the good times, I journaled them with a sense of peace and joy. Remember now, I wrote this 20 years ago…peace

I was born in to a typical middle class family in Eastern Ohio. I was raised in a small town along the Ohio River. The best way to describe my life growing up would be that of a young Huckleberry Finn. I grew up and played along the banks of the Ohio River. Every day was a new adventure. Most of the time I was getting into some sort of trouble or planning an expedition to an unexplored beach along the riverfront. Our town was nestled along the banks of the Ohio River. It was a very small town of less than 5000 citizens. There were about 110 kids in each graduating class and that was pushing it. As young children, we banded together to form small groups of guys that hung out together.

We laid claim to the best whiffle ball field and Granny Smith apples trees in town. The riverbanks and flood plains of the Ohio River is where we hung out everyday and built all of our forts. When we weren’t doing that we would play football in the street or in someone’s backyard. My friends and I were always playing army or building a tree house on the river somewhere.

You might wonder where little kids got all the wood, nails and tools necessary to build forts. Our tools, which were never returned, came from our father’s toolboxes. All of the plywood and 2x4s came from open railroad boxcars, the stockyards of the many industrial warehouses and small factories that were along the railway lines.

I remember some of the more dangerous and foolish acts of mischief we did. We had a habit of hopping the freight and coal trains. For fun, we would hop a train and ride it 10 or 15 miles down the river, jump off, swim all day in a beautiful creek and hop another train home. We would jump and dive off the highway bridge into the creek for an hour or two, then we would always get chased off by the State Highway Patrol. I guess we were just lucky that we never got hurt or drowned all the years we did that. Ok, I know what you are thinking, but common sense never stopped us and lady luck was always there for us.

THE COOL, POLLUTED WATERS OF THE OHIO RIVER

The cool, polluted waters of the Ohio River gave much enjoyment to us as children. Each year after the spring floods, we would find a new sandy beach to clean up and call home for the summer. We always dug a large fire pit for our nightly bon fires. After we had that set, we would find a good tree and build us a tree house. We always had a swing from a cut monkey vine to swing out into the river. Swimming, fishing and exploring filled our days every spring, summer and fall. This was my lifestyle until I started organized sports in the seventh grade.

Although danger lurked around us all the time, I do remember one brush with trouble that was too close. We swam in the river all the time, but my first swim across the Ohio River was when I was eight years old. My friends and I were in the middle of the river riding the waves from a large coal barge that was churning down the river. We had swum into a swift current and did not realize where we were going. As I recall, there were four of us fools in the water, all the same age. Well, you guessed it, out of nowhere another huge coal barge appeared, determined to drown the four of us.

Thank goodness for the large log we saw floating near us. After frantically swimming to the log, we grabbed on to it and kicked and swam for dear life. We eventually made it to the West Virginia banks and plotted our course back across. We were much further down stream than we had ever ventured before.

We had landed on an enormous slag pile. Slag is the residual waste of stone and rock from mined coal. Millions of tons of slag were deposited along the riverbanks for hundreds of miles. The four of us kept close to the log as we floated and swam back to the Ohio side of the river. We got caught in another swift current and by the time we reached land, we had traveled several miles down river. After we reached the shore, we walked up the hill to the railroad tracks to hop on a coal train home. After about an hour wait, we decided to start walking. Well, we ended up walking about 8 miles home that day because no more trains came.

AS I WENT THROUGH GRADE SCHOOL

As I went through grade school and high school, I never much cared for studying. Both of my sisters were very smart and received very good grades in school. I received mostly B’s, a few A’s in math and the rest C’s. I do remember getting a D in fourth grade reading. I will never forget that feeling. I was never part of the mainstream even as a young child. I had always followed the beat of a different drummer.

As I reflect on other events of my early childhood, I see the beginnings of ADD and a childhood of undetected depression. I never felt I fit in anywhere. This emptiness still burns in my heart today. I have mature filters to view my life through now, but the pain is no less. I am still learning about depressive behavior. I cannot think of any disease that robs ones happiness, well being and contentment like depression and social anxiety does.

Where I grew up was sixty miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were right in the middle of the steel belt. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s life was very good. Every family had two cars and many had boats. Most of the stable jobs were in the coalmines, steel mills and power plants that spotted the local region. We lived in the Upper Ohio Valley, which included Eastern Ohio, Northern West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania. I actually worked in the coal mines for over two years to help pay my way through college.

This was perhaps the largest melting pot of Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Polish, Hungarians and Germans in the U.S. Most were first and second generation immigrants. Both sets of my grandparents were 1st generation immigrants from Hungary and Lebanon. I often joke about not knowing whether I should be riding a camel or driving a gypsy wagon. With ancestors like that, no wonder I am a little adventurous.

THE GREATEST INFLUENCE IN MY LIFE

The greatest influence in my life was my father. I always aspired to be like him. He was very goal and task oriented. He was a math teacher at our high school for 39 years. Actually, he taught in the same classroom all those years. I read his dream and goal he wrote in his senior year book in high school. He wanted to be a math teacher and football coach. So after he served in WWII, he returned home and went to college where he starred in football and fell in love with my mother. After graduating from college, he came back to his hometown and settled. He was an astute golfer, great poker player and inspirational coach.

He taught the young men he coached about the principles of living a successful life. He taught discipline, hard, honest work, respect and guts as the pillars of a strong man. His style ingrained these principles into your soul as you practiced and played on the football field of life. His half time sermons were tremendous motivational speeches challenging us to call upon the undiscovered man within. He would challenge the manhood inside oneself to step up and find the desire to prevail as men and high school players.

I find myself drifting to the last football game my senior year.. The time is 10:30 PM Friday night. A group of one hundred and fifty fans and players are in our locker room. We just won our last senior football game11-8 to finish the second undefeated football season in the town’s history and my father was the head coach for both of them. I was very fortunate in high school football. I was the running back on our team. I received a scholarship to college. I was also awarded Ohio All State team honors and selected to the Vanguard High School All American Team.

Our success came from our strong desire to succeed. We all practiced and believed in leadership by example. The values I learned on that football field have carried me through to the present. They are 1) Unselfishness – the essence of teamwork. 2) Fellowship – the true caring for your fellow man. 3) Persistence – the most admirable character. Our team learned and refined most of these traits the summer before our senior year.

In the spring of my senior year I also ran track. I was very successful in this sport also and fortunate enough to receive three honors that year at the Ohio State Track meet in Columbus, Ohio. The state meet was at the football stadium of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team. Wow…I was on hallow ground for 2 days. My senior year in high school inspired many great memories. The lessons I learned playing football and running track as a winner created the core value system of my life.

THE VIETNAM WAR WAS RAGING ON IN DEFEAT.

The Vietnam War was raging on in defeat. The chemistry was unusual in the summer of 1973. The country was in unrest. Rock and Roll had become the most powerful force in a teen’s life never to leave. The fear of going to war as an eighteen year old and dying for no cause in Vietnam had played havoc on my mind for 10 years. I would watch the news every night and see the body count that was listed of the American solders killed that week by the Vietcong. I still think that bothers me today. Maybe that is part of the never ending nightmares I have always being chased and killed. Fear of dying and living for the moment became prevalent behavior for me the rest of my life.